Yet another space scene but I like spaceships…
http://rendermonitor.no-ip.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=242#242
I think it’s finished but I’d really like any suggestions as to how to improve it, I want to get it just right, then I will do a little animation. (Just don’t say, Discovery never went to Saturn ! 
)
I like your Discovery better than your Enterprise 
Stefano
hmm… the sun looks a bit fake (but i don’t think that you can do a lot about that) and the rings seem to have a bit too much specularity but for the rest its nice 8)…
d52477001
Niiice 
Me likey!
But… (as always, when it comes to me :P)
The rings on planets are composed of zillions and zillions pieces of ice, so they would’t reflect the ship. The reflection now makes the planet and the rings look toyish and really, really small, considering how huge they actually are. The sun is just fine, in my opinion, but it’s rather large.
Hmm… I haven’t seen the movie, but I know the ship went to Jupiter in that, but in the book it went to Saturn, if I recall correctly now. Anyway, the planet in the book was different from the planet in the movie, for some odd reason.
Leave the reflections in, It may not be too realistic, but it sure as hell looks cool.
I seem to recall Star Trek Voyager having a very similar opening to this.
:o
I don’t care about the realism, but it looks like a bunch of toys with that reflection. It makes the ship and the planet look really small.
Bravo!!
But I would suggest using a different alpha texture for the Saturns rings.
Noise doesn’t look very good.
Use a non-procedural texture, or size down clouds a whole lot. Something like.
wow the starship look very good!!!
the planet texture look a bit “flat”…and I don’t think the ring would relfect the ship…anyway the overall pic is pretty good!!!
Keep up making starship!!
Ryhsy, the ship is superb. The rings however and the shadow they cast are a bit dodgy.
As Jolly Gnome wrote, the rings consist of zillions and zilions of particles, Ice, dust, bits of asteroids etc, therefore of the shadow your rings cast on the planet would not be such a clean cut thin line.
If you are going to keep the reflection on the rings, the Monolith should be reflected too.
Cool pic though regardless of my opinions,
Sonix.
Thanks everyone !
Hopefully, most of the suggestions/crits have been implemented/fixed in the update - same link as before, just scroll down when you get there. The full list of changes is listed there too.
Actually the monolith SHOULD be reflecting but I’ve no idea why it isn’t. :-?
The shadow on the planet isn’t actually a shadow, I had to fake it with a black band because using a real shadow lamp gave awful results (see my recent post in the Q&A forum. Though there are actual Voyager I or II photos showing surprisingly sharp shadows from the ring on Saturn despite its transparency - I can scan one and upload it if you like.
Jolly Gnome, you are right about the reflections making the planet look small and toyish - this update should at least help, but it’s not perfect. Also Discovery went to Jupiter in the film for the sole reason that they couldn’t find a good way to make Saturn’s rings !
Hope you all like the update.
Nice pic, but I think you need to use a clouds texture instead of noise.
Just use a clouds texture with the detail all the way up, and the size all the way down and make sure that it’s the ‘lumps’ of the cloud that are opaque, not as it is now, where it’s the ‘dots’ that are transparent.
Monoliths? That spaceship?
I think I know where this came from…
Did you read the Odyssey 2001 triliogy?
P.S. The pic looks really cool, especially the second version. The surface of the planet, though…
/me slaps lightning with a fat wet trout
read the trilogy?
The MOVIE is what to be seen.
The first book of the trilogy was written after the movie! Clark originally wrote a very short novel which Kubrick greately elaborated. The book 2001 came after.
The other two books are plain <higly offensive word unappropriate between gentlemen here>
Stefano
Thanks for the trout.
I think the two other books were brilliant. The movie might have been good made today, but as it is the graphics are poor and the imagination does a much better job.
The book is much better.
hehe…
the movie is a cornestone of world filmography, and for many people (me included) the best sci-fiction movie ever.
I found the books pretty weak, but this is just me
no problem for the trout, it’s alway a pleasure…
Stefano
You’re both wrong, S68 and lightning…
The first two books were Clarke’s best ever.
The second two (that’s right ! It’s not a trilogy ! It’s a quartet !) were Clarke’s worst, so I discount their existense from the sequence altogether. So it’s really only a duet.
The second film was also rather good, but spoiled severly by the director (or scriptwriter or some other idiot) adding words that weren’t in the book : “Use them together…use them in peace.”…dear me, that’s just…urrrghh !!!
S68 wrote :
The first book of the trilogy was written after the movie!
Not true ! The foreward to the 2001 novel, by Arthur C, reads :
“Stanley suggested that before we embarked on the drudgery of the script, we let our imaginations soar freely by writing a complete novel, from which we would later derive the script (and hopefully a little cash).
This is more or less the way it worked out, though towards the end, novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously…thus I rewrote some sections after seeing the movie rushes.”
But yes, 2001 was one of the best films ever made (sci-fi or not) and one of the extreme few sci-fi films (possibly the only one) that didn’t need a big explosion !
lightning wrote :
The movie might have been good made today, but as it is the graphics are poor and the imagination does a much better job.
My turn for the trout… they didn’t have any graphics back then ! And I still like the original models - the details are amazing, especially on the 20-foot wide sphere they used for the moon…not to mention the centrifuge they actually built !
lightning also said “the surface of the planet, though…”
You’ll have to be more specific…others have said it looks too flat, but I don’t really know what to do about that. Saturn is pretty bland…
Now on with the semi-perpetual tweaking…
Cool,
thanx for pointing out
Actually I think there has been some ‘quarrels’ for the paternity of the novel, You cited Clark, and what I said came from a quoting of Kubrick 
I must check at home if I find that.
Stefano
Humph. Thanks. 
About them not having graphics, that is why the movie is not so good. I’m just saying that if they did it would be better. Also, the Star Wars movies had much better graphics, but it’s before my time so I don’t know when they were in relationship to eachother.
The surface of the planet is a bit bland; it needs some turbulance to make it more interesting.
After much tweaking, I came up with this :
(Alas SFS is down right now, so remember to cut and paste the link into a new window)
The rings look a bit flat, but I think that’s probably what they actually look like (only made up of millions of bits of rock, which would enrage my computer if I tried to render that) - pretty featureless.
Lightning is right about the planet (not visible in this update) needing a bit of turbulence - anyone know where I can find a suitable Saturn texture ?
I accidentley ignored Cybolic last time, who wrote :
Just use a clouds texture with the detail all the way up, and the size all the way down and make sure that it’s the ‘lumps’ of the cloud that are opaque, not as it is now, where it’s the ‘dots’ that are transparent.
Well I’ve done the first bit, but how do I make the lumps opaque ? I’d need the main ring texture to have overriding control of the alpha value, which I can’t figure out how to do.
Hopefully this will be the last update - at least in the WIP forum - I’ll try to implement any more suggestions anyone has (good ones anyway !) directly to the animation.